and the lion's roar, the lion's roar
by GorgeousGreyMatter
Summary: it's something that I have heard before. and I'm a goddamned fool, but then again so are you. (Modern AU, motorcycles, gangs, drug rings, oh my!)


When Arya wakes up, everything seems kind of fuzzy and out of focus. The brights are brighter— really bright, and her brain feels like it's pounding in her skull. She tries to move and feels restrained—she looks down, expecting to see ropes or chains, shoelaces, anything—she's surprised to find it's just a seatbelt. She wrenches the buckle, and it comes apart with a click, and she's scrambling in her seat to see the road pass by.

"Should keep yourself buckled up, princess."

She starts at the sound of a voice, light and teasing. It's one she's heard before, and it's calming for a moment, like one of her brothers ruffling her hair, a reassuring palm on her shoulder.

"Gendry? You.…how the _fuck_ did I end up in this car?" She shouldn't ask, really. She knows what happened. She had been so angry with her brother. _Never go to bed angry_, their mother had always said. And he'd even brought her the tea in bed, stroking her hair. '_I'm sorry, little sister_. _I just want to keep you safe.' _It had been sweet. So she'd thought. Stupid Robb.

Stupid Arya.

"Robb said I had to keep you—"

"Robb said? My brother actually told you to drug and kidnap me? Strap me into this fucking car against my will?!"

"'wasn't the one who drugged you—that was your brother's genius idea—and would you have gone otherwise? Kid, I haven't seen you much since you were ten, but I'm guessing not fucking likely."

At that, Arya snarls indignantly, feel her anger boiling and bubbling, hot in her stomach.

"Turn around. Take me home. I have to help my brother…and then kill him."

"No."

She starts to thrash and kick at Gendry's seat, screaming at him to take her back to the Winterfell house, actually reaching for the wheel as if to turn around the car herself. Gendry swears, wrenching the wheel to the right and slamming on the breaks, the engine sputtering to a stop. He turns to look at her, blue ice that cuts so deep it floors her and she's suddenly so cold even in the hot haze of the afternoon. But the burn returns and she raises her fist as if she means to slap him and he grabs her wrist, then the other, not even loosening his grip while she struggles and curses and fights.

"This stops now," he says. And he squeezes her wrist, so hard it hurts, but she just clenches her teeth like a horse at the bit. "Stupid idiot girl. Sansa's in with the Lannisters, and who knows what they're doing with her. Robb is basically planning a fucking gang war, and I've been given one job—just one— and that's keeping you safe."

"I should be with my family, they need me, I can't…"

"Robb needs you to be alive. You think they wouldn't use you to get to him? You think they aren't looking for your scrawny ass right now?"

Gendry's hands are clenched so tight around the wheel his fingertips are white.

When Arya looks down at her own hands, the skin there is red and inflamed, but she can't seem to feel it.

/

Gendry thinks she could be asleep again, as the engine roars to life. She's quiet as he pulls forward onto the highway, with her head resting against the windowsill.

"Listen, Princess—"

"Don't call me that," she snaps. "Like you really care anyway."

"Maybe not. But your brother has been good to me, and I owe him one."

"I can take care of myself," she says. As she mutters this, her fingers trail reverently over the pearled handle of Jon's knife, still stuffed, like a secret, into the lining of her jacket.

"Don't doubt it. But you're still stuck with me."

Gendry is certain that this is not going to end well. He isn't sure why Robb even thought this might work, but at this point, he has no choice in the matter. Besides, the girl is right, there's nothing for him there in King's Landing, just the shop, rusted metal, the reek of gasoline and dust. In that town, he's got nothing to fight for. He's got no allegiance. No stake. And, as he looks at Arya, her face strangely pointed and fox-like, thinks that if he has to fight for something, it might as well be her.

The next few days are tense at best. Gendry is stiff and agitated as he drives, trying to put as many miles between them and the Lannisters as they can, refusing to stop unless Arya is desperate, her bladder practically near bursting on more than one occasion. And Gendry all but forgoes getting sleep—(when he does, catching a nap curled into the steering wheel, he dreams of stampedes, of being bludgeoned under hooves cut like razors). Arya is just as wary of him as he is of her. He doesn't let her out of his sight, shoots daggers if anyone so much as coughs in her direction, and he smokes so many cigarettes that his hands shake constantly, fingers tap-tap-tapping against the gearshift. Arya is restless and by the end of the third night, they're both ready to slit each other's throats and be done with it.

They eat burgers and fries out of paper bags stained with grease while sprawled on the hood of Gendry's car. They're thirty miles outside of Dallas, and the sun's just setting. Everything muted pinks and yellows, Arya's ears hum from the rattling song of the cicadas and the buzz of freeway traffic in the distance. Gendry licks his fingers, and then his lips, tasting Coke coupled with the sickly sweet bite of nicotine.

Arya doesn't eat much, can't bring herself to feel hungry. Not in this heat. She used to like her long hair—really the only thing she liked about being a girl, but damp with sweat and hanging in her face, she wishes she could chop it off right here. So when Gendry says the words—_motel, sleep, shower_ it's like a dream. A beautiful dream.

"I'll get us out of Texas tonight, and we'll grab a room tomorrow for the morning…get some real sleep, figure out where the fuck we're going next…"

Arya blinks. "You don't know?"

Gendry shrugs. "You're brother wasn't too clear on that part."

Arya thinks on that for a moment, struck suddenly with the strange realization that she is freer under the guise of a hostage than as little Arya Stark of Winterfell. It was strange, a little thrilling. And wholly confusing. "We could go anywhere then? Anywhere I wanted?"

"Against my better judgment, I'm going to supply you with a tentative yes…"

"What about Montana?"

"And what, pray tell, is in Montana?"

Arya smiles genuinely for the first time in what feels like weeks: "Jon."

The prospect of a room with a real bed, a shower, even a toilet that isn't shoved in a stall is almost too much for Arya to even process right now. There's a layer of grime on her skin an inch thick, and she can't wait to scrub it off, shed it like snakeskin. Mostly what she wants is to remember what it feels like— to be cool and pink and shiny and new again. She's just so tired.

Once they get off the freeway, Gendry pulls into the first motel they see— 24 hours, free wifi, the whole shebang. It looks like shit, but after being on the road for so many nights, it feels like the fucking Taj Mahal. He throws their two duffels over his shoulder, and he knows that Arya's definitely just a step or two behind him because when the door to the lobby slides open, the air conditioning blasts them both in the face; he hears her gasping into his ear.

"Thank fuck," she breathes.

"No kidding."

"You kids need room?"

Gendry asks for a double room, but the woman doesn't seem to hear him. Or maybe she just doesn't care. Arya thinks it's probably the latter because when Gendry tries to argue with her, she shoves the keys across the counter, scowling around a mouth full of teeth and a gap the size of the Grand Canyon stretched between two pointed incisors.

"One bed left. You take, or you sleep in street."

Outside there is just crackling neon and the _no vacancy_ sign flickers.

On, off, on, off, all night until dawn.

The room is too small, a little dingy, dimly lit, with a carpet of the 70's shag variety, sickly green, stained, and balding in patches around the bed. "I'll sleep on the floor," says Gendry with finality. "I'll shower first," she answers.

She thinks she'll save them both the trouble, any of the awkwardness that hormones and nudity—that war of the sexes Sansa's always talked about—seemed to cause. Arya doesn't know very much about boys but she's not stupid—Gendry is a boy, a man really, and she's a girl and it's the last thing she wants to think about.

/

The bathroom is cramped, with yellowing tiles that were probably white once, and peeling wallpaper with curling ends, spotted with mildew. But regardless of all of that, it has a fairly decent sized shower, so as soon as Arya sheds her clothes, leaving them in a crumpled heap on the floor, she quickly forgets about all of the room's imperfections when the first heavenly blast of hot water hits her naked skin. When she sticks her head under the hot spray, she has to literally bite her tongue to stifle the moan that tries to escape from between her lips. She braces herself, palms splayed against the wall to support her shaky legs and just...breathes. By the time she finishes washing (she shampoos her hair three times before she finally feels clean), the water's practically run cold but she doesn't care that Gendry'll be pissed. And when she steps out onto the bath mat, shrouded in steam, she pauses, she just stands still because she still can't seem to fathom that she's here, now that they've stopped moving for a moment and she can just take it all in.

The towel on the rack is a little too small, more than threadbare, but she wraps it around her shoulders anyway, shivering as the water starts to evaporate off her skin, leaving gooseflesh behind. The mirror is fogged up, but she can still see herself clear enough. What she sees isn't exactly pleasing, but she's no troll—though she knows she's too skinny for a girl her age, all knobby knees and sharp angles, her face possessing none of the soft feminine curves that Sansa's always had, the ones that had boys buzzing around the house like flies since Sansa turned twelve; but Arya, she's quick, she's strong, and that's really all that matters to her anyway.

Like she'd said before, her hair is the only thing really noticeably feminine about her impish looks. It's annoyingly thick, she thinks, especially now, as it hangs loose and heavy all the way to her hips. Normally Arya keeps it subdued in a tight bun or braid, something that always drove her mother and sister mad—_Why can't you let it down? You look like such a lovely young lady_—and now it's more bothersome than ever, drenched and dripping cold droplets onto her toes. The knife is still in her jacket pocket, and her hand's clenched around the handle before she even realizes she's done it.

All it takes is a steady hand, a quick sawing motion, and the first clump of tresses falls into the sink. Maybe it's stupid, she thinks, as she hacks off more and more of the offending curls, but the act of cutting it feels sort of therapeutic, a little like being reborn, maybe like she's finally letting go of some of the weight that's been crushing her since her father looked the wrong way down the barrel of another man's gun.

Either way, by the time she's finished, Arya doesn't recognize the face in the mirror looking back at her, and frankly, she's perfectly fine with that.

/

Gendry's still not able to relax, even after he's stashed their bags and spread a blanket and pillow out onto the floor for himself. So while the girl's in the bath, he smokes on the stoop with the door cracked so he can keep an eye on the place, and seriously, he's pretty sure he's taken at least ten years off his life with the rate he's finishing packs these days.

"You know that's a disgusting habit."

Her voice is sharp and sudden, and he jumps, swears as the lit end of his cigarette falls onto the top of his hand, singing the thin skin stretched across his knuckles.

"Fuck, make a little more noise when you walk, christ," he hisses, brushing ash from his t-shirt, sucking at the burn with his lips curled into a scowl.

"Don't be such a whiner," she says airily, and before he can protest, she's grabbed his hand, her tiny fingers, unexpectedly rough against his own monstrous palms, pressing, insistent, against the burn. "You're fine—there's not even a blister. Men are such babies…"

Gendry huffs, "Are you always this pleasant?" He couples the words with a harsh stare, feeling inexplicably pleased that she breaks first, her grey eyes darting away from his face.

"Only when I'm kept hostage against my will," she says.

"Whatever," he answers, crushing the still-smoldering butt under the heel of his boot. He shuts the door, locking all three bolts with a satisfying _click. _Though when looks up, he's startled to see that she standing right next to him, the flowery scent of cheap motel soap/ mixed with the metallic bite of hard water, spinning around his head.

Her hair is down, but it's much shorter now, with the fringe hanging over her eyes and the edges blunt and uneven, like she'd hacked them off with…

_With a knife, _he realizes sourly.

All of a sudden, he's assaulted with a slew of various images of all the ways Arya could stick him with the point of some needle-knife like he's a suckling pig. To say the least, none of them are on a list of things that sound fun to him.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" she spits, but he doesn't answer her, pulling her close by the front of her bathrobe, thrusting his hands into the pocket, ignoring the way she's squirming and cursing in his arms.

"Hey, asshole!" she screeches, and he winces, though he's back and away from her in a no more than a second. "_What the fuck!"_

He shrugs, grasping the thin blade between his thumb and forefinger, holding it out in front of him like the object's offending him in some way.

"Not really looking to get stabbed in my sleep, Princess," he says, examining the tiny knife with an appraising gaze. It's skinny, light, but it's well-crafted, and expensive, he notes, fingering the shiny silver inlay etched on to the mother-of-pearl handle.

"I wasn't going to do anything with it, so give it back," she grits, her fists balled at her sides. He wants to laugh, because with the way her face is reddening, she looks like a little kid about to throw a temper tantrum. "It's mine," she adds, slow and furious.

"Mine for the night," he singsongs, slipping into the bathroom, faster than a blink, locking the door behind him. He's got something almost resembling a smile on his face, even as he steps into a cold shower, because he realizes can have a few minutes of peace, knowing the girl's not going to run anywhere, not without her brother's knife to take with her.

/

Arya is _fuming_, stomping around the room, tossing clothes out of her bag and knocking things haphazardly off the dresser just because she's angry and needs something to throw. She's always had a hot temper, and Gendry is yanking on every last thread of her patience, unraveling it like it's an old sweater. Sure, Arya's been surrounded by brothers her whole life, no stranger to excesses of testosterone, but she's certainly not used to being treated so rudely, to having her personal space so completely and utterly violated.

It's unnerving.

Plus, he'd taken her knife, and she hadn't even seen it coming—that was the most irritating thing, she thinks, that he'd been able to one-up her like that. He was faster than she was, which didn't happen often, not to her, and that bothered her more than she wished it did.

"Bastard," she mutters under her breath, plopping down on the bed with her arms crossed and her knees pulled up underneath her.

And maybe pouting is more exhausting than she thinks, because Arya doesn't even remember falling asleep. It just hits her, as sudden and unexpected as a blow to the head.

/

When the bathroom door creaks open, Arya stirs, though she doesn't open her eyes right away. When she does, the room is only dimly lit, the curtains having been drawn sometime while she was asleep, she guesses.

She just barely makes out Gendry's outline in the dark, but he steps closer, and she can see he's bare from the waist up, jeans slung low on the steep slopes of his hips, hair still damp from his own shower. She doesn't know what he's doing as he approaches the bed, his hand shoved into his pocket. When he pulls it out, he's got the knife, and her heart starts to hammer in her chest.

Needless to say, she feels stupid, and a little perplexed, when he places it delicately, like it's something precious (which it is, to _her),_ on the nightstand next to her head.

Up close, Gendry's skin is much darker than her own milk-white complexion, but when he turns, the slope of his back catches the light, and she has to stifle a gasp into the blanket because the entirety of it is branded with ink, thick lines, intricate and swirling, but the design is too complicated for her to make out in the poor lighting.

She tries to close her eyes, feign sleep, but he looks down, and she's once again not fast enough. Their eyes meet again, and Arya feels herself unwittingly blushing.

She hates it.

"Go back to sleep," he says, but the words aren't said venomously, and it's not a command or a thinly-veiled threat, for once.

She turns towards the wall, instead of saying anything, and curls around one of the pillows, burying her face in the soft cotton. She hears rustling, the sounds of Gendry trying to make himself comfortable, something that she thinks must be difficult on this awful floor.

But then there's only silence in the room. Just the sounds of shallow breathing.

After about five minutes of silence, she guesses he's sleeping, and she's just about to let herself drift off when she hears him, his voice barely a whisper.

"I'm sorry…if… if I scared you."

Arya doesn't roll over to look at him, but she stiffens underneath the pile of blankets she doesn't remember covering herself with.

"You didn't," she mumbles.

Neither of them wakes until early the next morning.


End file.
